


you've got to be starving

by talionprinciple (Triskai)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Other, Pre-Canon, Suggestive Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27756091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triskai/pseuds/talionprinciple
Summary: “Those such as yourself will ever need someone to hold their leash. Entrust your hatred to me, and I will direct it in service of a better world.” It rests a hand on the back of his neck. Solid, immovable weight. “So. How about it?”--Short speculation on Fandaniel's ascension.
Relationships: Elidibus/Fandaniel (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	you've got to be starving

He’s killed them all. Every one of the coin-clutching, greedy degenerates that sold his family out for a handful of gil: torn apart, made to suffer by his hand. His borrowed power still coils restlessly between his curled fingers, a mottled purple glow.

There’s so much blood. He wants to laugh, but can’t force it through the tightness in his throat.

What is it about the shine of gold that makes men do terrible things to each other? Or is cruelty in their nature already, and the gold merely an excuse? He probes at that thought like a bruise, testing the give of it, the ensuing pain. He thinks of the pleasure he’d felt when they begged for their lives. He thinks of the price he will have to pay.

“Is this retribution to your liking?”

His benefactor stands amidst the carnage, draped all in white like a corpse. Not a speck of blood mars its robes. By now, he’s gotten used to the way the man – if it is a man at all, which he doubts at times – comes and goes without a sound, moving as the wind moves from place to place. But he thinks he will never grow used to the way it speaks – with a slow, measured calm, like a man unreachable, trapped in a dream.

“It is my fervent desire,” the figure says, stepping soundlessly closer, “to bring about a world where such tragedy need never occur again. A world without paucity, where men shall not be tempted by greed. If you, too, desire such a world, I can give you the means to make it so.”

He stares down at the corpse beneath his heel. 

He doesn’t care if what happened to him happens to someone else. He should, but he doesn’t. Somewhere along the way he’d lost sight of what it meant to be human, to want things or to care about what happened to other people. He’d become an arrow set on a course not of his own making, able to do one thing and one thing only. Now that he’s accomplished it, he feels like a lit fuse. All lethal promise with nowhere to go.

“Why do you hesitate? Is this not why you accepted my gift initially?”

“I am beyond such lofty dreams,” he confesses at last. “I wish now only for violence.”

The figure is silent for a moment. Then: “That, too, can be accommodated.”

He doesn’t realize the other has approached him until its boots come to a rest at the edge of his vision, the tip of one resting casually in a small pool of blood. Red creeps up onto the sole, the first evidence that the figure is corporeal at all.

“Those such as yourself will ever need someone to hold their leash. Entrust your hatred to me, and I will direct it in service of a better world.” It rests a hand on the back of his neck. Solid, immovable weight. “So. How about it?”

He has the sudden impression of toeing the edge of a precipice, peering at the rocks below that invite him down, down, down, to dash himself to pieces.

Well, why not?

He turns his head and presses a kiss to the center of that gloved palm.

In the quiet, he hears the creature’s surprised breath. Emboldened, he reaches up with one hand all tacky with blood and grips its sleeve, pulling the palm flush against his cheek. The sticky red marks left by his fingers give him satisfaction; they are a confirmation that this is real, that he can truly touch the thing. If only he can drag this pale phantom down to his level, he thinks, confirm to himself that even gods are at times no more than animals like himself—he will have the creature’s power, he will give himself over willingly.

It closes its hand over his face, three sharp claws digging into his jaw, his temple. He shuts his eyes.

“You desire me?”

Its tone is unreadable. Utterly flat. But it draws closer, pulling him in by the grip it has on his head, and he can’t help but think it seems _possessive._

“And if I do?” he challenges, and yanks at its arm, hard.

(He gets the impression, as the two of them tumble to the ground, that he’s being – indulged – as one would indulge the whimsies of a child.)

He lands ass-first on the stone and barely manages to catch himself with an elbow before his skull follows suit. The creature follows him down with more grace, ending up hunched over him on all fours, the strange silhouette of its spiked robes and the protruding red beak of its mask giving it the appearance of a beast. 

The thought sends a thrill through him. After all, who deals with a monster if they aren’t willing to risk being bitten?

It kneels over him like that, legs splayed out on either side of his hips, the hem of its heavy robes taut across his belly like a rope. One clawed hand comes to rest upon the soft flesh of his throat – but not pressing, not yet.

“Ascian,” he says, naming the creature at last.

“You may call me Elidibus.”

As a child, he had been told to never give his name to a creature of magic, lest it lay claim to his very soul. 

Recklessly, he says, “And I am—”

Elidibus chooses that moment to press down, and his words die off in a strangled gasp. When it speaks, its tone brooks no argument. “After this night, you will be known as Fandaniel.”

 _What a ridiculous name_ , he thinks.


End file.
